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It’s one of the toughest questions for new writers: What should I charge?

“What’s the going rate?” writers ask me, hoping there is a pat answer that will let them know if they’re being ripped off.

But there is no going rate, for anything in freelancing. There’s only what you’re willing to take and what the market will bear. Where those meet, you have a gig.

What really matters is your hourly rate. Time is your most precious resource, so when you’re pricing a job you want to figure as best you can how long it will take you to do the gig. The multiply by your hourly rate to get your bid. The hourly rate you need will depend on your own circumstances — how high expenses are, how many available work hours you have, and what you consider appropriate.

As you gain experience, keep raising that hourly rate. That’s really it in a nutshell.

To help you start setting your rates, here are seven questions I ask to help me decide if a writing gig is worth taking:

1. How bad do you need this gig? If you have open time in your schedule, it can be better to fill it with any sort of paid writing rather than simply having downtime. Getting fully booked is key to raising your rates in the long run, as once you’re fully booked you can start to be choosier about which gigs you take. If it’s a particularly interesting assignment or a high-profile client, it might even be worth doing a small free assignment from them, to get a valuable clip that could help you move up.
2. Will this client recommend you? If rates are low, you need to know if this client is the type who would talk you up to other editors or marketing managers. I know writers who will only do pro bono works for clients who are guaranteed referrals.
3. Does this client have more work for you? You have to do a lot less marketing when your clients have ongoing work for you, month after month. Since I enjoy writing more than marketing, I’ve been known to discount my rates a bit for clients who have steady work, while one-off projects go at my top rates.
4. How pleasant do they seem? The longer I do this, the more I value clients with a nice personality — they’re easygoing, fun to talk to, clear about what they want, and seem to love my first drafts. The more of a pain a client is, the more you should charge.
5. How complicated is the work? This is one of the most important factors. An offer of $50 a blog post might sound okay, but if it turns out the client wants 1,000-word blog posts with multiple interviews for each one, it’ll be disastrous on an hourly-rate basis.
6. How sophisticated is the topic? Writing about pets for an audience with a 6th grade education is going to be easier than writing for an audience of retirement-plan managers. The more you’ll have to research an industry you don’t know well, the longer it will take, and the more you need to charge.
7. What payment terms will they agree to? This one took me a while to catch onto, but if a client doesn’t pay for four months or more, they need to pay top rates. They’re basically using you as a short-term lender and running their business with what is rightfully your money. I hate that. You also often end up wasting time having to chase down these slow-payers, so you have to figure that into your bid. Folks that pay me the day I put in an invoice, on the other hand, deserve a discount.

How do you decide what to charge? Leave a comment let us know.

Cash register: ctechs – stock.xchng

Does freelance writing seem like a closed club, and you can’t find the clubhouse door?

One writer told me this week:

The biggest problem is you can’t break into magazines unless you already have clips.

You can’t get clips without experience, and you can’t get experience without clips.

I know that’s the conventional wisdom. But it just ain’t true.

Yes, it is more difficult to get an assignment without any clips.

But you can do it.

Every single freelance writer working today once had no clips. And yet, they somehow managed to start their career.

I did it — without a j-school degree (or any college degree actually), or any inside connections or media contacts.

Here are seven ideas for how to jump-start your freelance writing career and get those first few clips:

1. Believe you can do it. As long as you think it’s an impossible task, you’re going nowhere.
2. Volunteer. When I first moved to the Seattle area, I wanted some local clips so I could start pitching publications based here — so I wrote a few pieces gratis for my regional library’s newsletter. Somewhere near you is a nonprofit that would love your help, give you a byline, recommend you, refer you, and give you a testimonial. Find them.
3. Enter contests. I got my first two steady clients by entering writing contests the publications held. Those essays led to offers to do reported stories. I’m not a fan of contests where you pay an entry fee, but keep your eyes peeled for contests in the publications you read.
4. Create your own samples. Your blog posts are samples — so write them like they are $1-a-word magazine assignments, and you can use them to get gigs. You want to write white papers? Write a white paper about how hiring a freelance writer can help grow a company’s customer base. Find a local, small business that needs web content and help them out. Presto! Samples.
5. Try the alternative press. I find alt papers (such as the Village Voice) are pretty open to new writers. Are you going to a concert, or maybe a protest? Call them up and ask if they have anyone covering it. If not, they might just give you a shot.
6. Take a class. You don’t need a degree, but take a magazine-writing or copywriting course. You’ll improve your skills, and my experience is professors can be a good connection for referrals.
7. Just go for it. I know writers who have sent query letters to the major national women’s magazines with no clips — and gotten an assignment. Learn how to write query letters, pitch your knowledge of your topic rather than offering clips, and get the gig. Or make cold calls until you line up business clients.

Yes, those first paying clients may not be for the big bucks. But they get you a few samples. Soon, you’re not a writer without clips. And you’re on your way.

How did you get your first clips? Leave a comment and tell us how you pulled it off.

Next on Marketing 101: How to advertise your services — free. Subscribe to catch the rest of this 21-part series.

By Pinar Tarhan

If you want to start a career as a freelance writer, you have two options:

You can quit your day job, dedicating yourself to writing full time. Or you can build your portfolio slowly, while keeping that office job.

Or so I thought. It didn’t occur to me there was a third option, until I failed to make either of those options work for me. Here’s how I found the perfect solution through trial and error:

Freelancing on the side

I had an office job when I decided I wanted to be a writer. So I first tried freelancing on the side.

Unfortunately, my job required me to work (and commute) six days a week. I was left with little time and energy to learn about freelance writing and marketing, much less time for actually sitting down to write.

It didn’t help matters that I didn’t like my job. So I quit.

Freelancing full-time

Feeling euphoric, I started writing full-time. But soon, I was lost in all the stuff I had to do and learn. When my initial queries failed me, I started applying to job ads and trying out content mills.

The highest-paying job I landed was $35 for a long travel article. I was starting to panic as my savings melted away.

Soon, I was producing a lot of articles for low pay. I wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t exactly making a living.

Freelancing with a twist

After months of hard work and no tangible results, it hit me. I didn’t have to choose between a full-time job (which left me with little time, energy and motivation) and full-time freelance writing (where I was under constant pressure to make money quickly).

I could take a flexible, part-time job I would enjoy to pay the bills.

So I started teaching English as a second language.

This part-time job brought me more than just a regular paycheck:

Benefits of my part-time job

• Happiness: I make money doing something I love, so I no longer have to take unsatisfactory writing assignments to make ends meet.
• Time: I only teach 14-18 hours a week. Not only do I have enough time for all my writing-related activities, I am also able to have a busy social life.
• Peace of mind: A regular paycheck motivates me to research markets more thoroughly, craft professional queries and send them to my dream publications.
• Inspiration: As I meet so many diverse people through my teaching, I’m not stuck for story ideas.
• Exercise: I live in a big city, and the commute on my part-time job is far less than I had with my full-time job. That leaves me with time to hit the pool.
• Broader network: Because I meet new people, the potential for new gigs increases. I also gain more readers for my blogs.
• Better time management skills: I have a tighter schedule than when I freelanced full time, but a lot more time than I had with my office job. I manage my time better because time isn’t spent working at a job I hate, or worrying about the bills.

These benefits enabled me to finally put a red velvet rope around my work by rejecting content mills, low-paying jobs and unreliable clients. I can now refuse to take an assignment unless I am satisfied with the conditions.

I am happier, I make more money freelancing and I feel more confident pitching to the publications I’ve been following, such as Freelance Switch and this blog.

What’s the right balance for your writing career? Leave a comment and tell us whether you prefer full-time or part-time freelancing.

Pinar Tarhan loves writing — part time — about subjects including writing, dating and entertainment. She blogs about managing a freelance writing career while writing what you love at Addicted to Writing.

One of the best ways to earn more as a freelance writer is to develop niche expertise.

Assignments get easier and easier to do, as you learn where the good sources and statistics are for that niche topic. Developing story ideas gets easier too — as sources catch on that you write a lot on their subject, they start tipping you off about breaking news and emerging trends.

You learn more and more about your niche. Eventually, you find you’re irreplaceable for clients in this niche. Invaluable. Your rates go up and up.

Sounds great, yes?

There’s only one big question to answer:

How do you find your niche?

I’m getting this question a lot lately in Freelance Writers Den:

I can’t decide whether I want my writing niche to be A or B.

As soon as I figure that out, I’m going to get started.

Bad news — you will never discover your freelance writing niche by endlessly pondering what topic you should choose as your specialty area.

There is a proven way to do it, though. I know because it worked for me.

How I found my writing niche

One of my first-ever gigs was freelancing for one section of a newspaper, the real estate section. So I wrote a lot about real estate. I found I liked it. The more I did it, the more different aspects of it interested me — how real estate is financed, for instance.

I noticed there were good-paying clients in this niche — real-estate companies, real-estate trade publications. As time went on, I kept growing my knowledge of real estate so I could get more assignments.

My other early gig was writing about community news for an alternative paper. While I found it interesting, it didn’t seem like there was a lot of money in that. And it was pretty straightforward stuff that anybody could report. As the years went on, I pitched fewer of these types of stories.

Later, I was a beat reporter for a business weekly. I got assigned loads of beats — higher education, arts and entertainment, retail, restaurant, franchising, nonprofits, and more. I wrote a lot on each of these topics.

As time went on, I found I enjoyed some of these topics more than others. I noticed everybody and anybody seemed to want to write about arts and entertainment, so I drifted away from that topic.

As my knowledge got more sophisticated, my articles in these areas got more attention. That gave me more credibility as an expert in my topic.

Since I’m a former legal secretary, I loved the lawsuits. Other reporters didn’t want to read those long legal filings, so I became the go-to person to cover business bankruptcies. I learned to read businesses’ SEC filings and charities’ tax forms, too. Soon, I was an indispensable reporter for stories that required document-based reporting.

I was able to build a stable of great-paying freelance clients who craved this expertise. They were easy to land because I had clips to show them that were about their exact topic. These clients were thrilled to get me at any price, because they found it hard to get anyone who understood their industry.

To sum up:

1. I wrote a lot on many different topics, which helped me improve my writing.
2. As I wrote, I learned which topics I liked.
3. Of the topics I liked, I observed which niches paid well, and wrote more on those.
4. I kept developing more sophisticated expertise in my chosen fields.
5. Good-paying clients became fairly easy to land.

What types of niches pay well

I often hear from writers who despair of finding a good-paying niche because they don’t know about financial services, or technology, or healthcare.

Two things about that: When I started, I didn’t know anything about them, either. You can learn as you go, if you have an interest in an area.

And contrary to popular belief, those aren’t the only good-paying niches around.

Anything technical will do. For instance, I recently met a writer whose passionate hobby is jewelry-making. You think there are a lot of writers who know the technical aspects and emerging trends in metalsmithing?

Manufacturers who use that method and need their products described would probably love to meet that writer. Ditto for trade publications for jewelry-makers and other industries that employ metalsmithing.

The myth of the single niche

My story illustrates another point: You do not need or even want to specialize in one, single niche. If your one industry goes in the tank, then you’ve got nothing.

It’s better to carve out several different specialized writing niches where you can claim expertise. At this point, I have many different areas I write on frequently, including legal, tax, insurance, business-finance, real estate, and jobs & careers.

Want to know your best niches? Start writing, and let them find you. You’ll see what you enjoy writing about.

Analyze where you’re seeing the best pay, and keep writing on those topics. The marketplace will point you to your best-paying writing niches.

What are your writing niches? Leave a comment and tell us how you developed your expertise.

P.S. To learn more about lucrative writing niches, see the Great Writing Niches e-course in Freelance Writers Den.